By Rev. Peronne Boddaert
Today I’d like to reflect with you on one of the aspects of the Eternal, the One without Name. That very other who wants to be known as Love, Lover at the same time. That very Other with whom you can be one, nevertheless. Is that possible? As such a unity experience isn’t within reach for everyone. However, through all ages there have been people that knew about the Eternal One, who seems to be both far away, as well as extremely near. Like if your beloved creeps under your skin, penetrating you fully inwardly. We read from prophet Hosea (8th BCE) and also from Hadewijchs poetry who was a Netherlandish mystical woman from 13th century. Who are these people? What do know about them? But most of all: what are they talking about?
Hosea is a real prophet. The Greek word profemi already reveals it: it means: ‘to speak in advance’. Gods messages for the future are straightly coming into Hosea, so that he becomes an im-mediate medium of the Eternal One’s speech. This is a very pure, direct experience: God’s language becomes Hosea’s language and in reverse. Actually the story that Hosea and God want to tell us is very moving I think. Through Hosea’s personal tragedy in his marriage with unfaithful Gomer we get to know something about God’s problem with human infidelity and about what is means to miss the point completely. In this case, Israel is the focus of the problem. What does its infidelity mean for both Hosea and God? Hosea is mad of anger, even furious and doesn’t want to do anything with Gomer anymore. “I’m not her husband and she’s not my spouse”. Full stop. He disconnects any communication with her for a long period. He even wishes bad things for her! Likewise it’s the case with God’s ‘mood’. Because also He happens to possess pathos, feelings. He turns away his face. Sad as she is about the shameless egoism the people are manifesting. Back to Hosea for a moment. He cannot live with the fact that it’s wrong between him and his wife. However jealous and disappointed he may be, he starts to think about Gomer. Who is that woman really? How come she got involved with other men? Anew he experiences his interest for her. He starts to acknowledge her as the person that she really is at that moment. Investigating her boundaries, testing her limits, continuing her life path as she chooses. And although he hopes for reunion, he doesn’t expect anything of her. He’s just very concerned about her, and alert. Only in this way he cal really love her, by giving her full space. Will Gomer come back? We don’t know for sure. But the possibility exists again! It might be true! I find it beautiful: this little prophet not being shy to show his emotions. Or…is it God at the same time? Both is true. The Eternal cannot and will not cut the link he created with his people. The covenant can’t be pushed aside. The people will always be in her memory and at the same time her realizes he fully loves them. Unconditionally, without expecting anything back. But yes, He hopes on return on the right track. ‘I’ll be there like the morning dew, like a lily he will flourish’. The people’s life path will become right again, becoming as they were meant to be. He knows it’s possible to be fully one in Him. By receiving his loving care you can live in him and with him in His commandments and in individual worth. Like through following him you fully become your truest self and you discover your individual freedom. I know it sounds paradoxically, which it is. But we’ll talk about it. The Eternal wants to be their Beloved for them. An open invitation to reach to Him, including all risks as the Eternal One is just who she is. An open end.
And now Hadewijch. She knew how to respond to God’s open invitation. Perhaps the one person has more talent for it than the other. She had direct, first-hand experiences with God, very intense. As you think of it these sort of experiences are fundamentally the building
stones of our different religions. They can’t exist without these evocations and testimonies. And for you and me they can become sources of inspiration, as well as study and reference-points. Hosea the prophet and Hadewijch the mystic: not the average type of people. A similarity between them is for instance in their experiencing God: you feel the Eternal with trembling knees, because you experience your own smallness and mortality through this Power. At the same time you only want to be with the Eternal, she stays the Love that fascinates. The very Other is enticing you. But whereas God’s message is resonated immediately with a socially moved prophet, a mystic describes foremost his or her personal findings with God. Like Hadewijch’s case, everything written down in magically beautiful medieval Netherlandish poetry. She has transcended normal levels of emotions, in her visions she has become conscious of the deeper realities of God’s truth, beauty and ways of loving. She calls it fervent, ardent encounters with the Other, Love. Both her and Hosea’s experiences are radically intervening their existence. She notices that contact with this Love goes hand in hand with deep abysses and high peaks. As if you are completely in love. Not knowing where you exactly are, loosing yourself totally, in all vulnerability. Like the love pain you can feel if that other seems completely out of reach, or is even cool and distant.
But it becomes Hadewijchs path: through serving this Love, this God, she knows about a perfect life, impregnated by real passion for her existence, as well as that of others. She is real. And Hadewijch feels like a rose again, rising from the thorns with the morning dew. Because this Love’s dew worked sweetly and refreshing –despite the pain. That dew healed again, gave new strength. Hadewijch again discovered a positive attitude towards life, a critical look on herself. She is ready to stand in life with all surrender and inspiration. In the end, life is fantastic! She tells us that because of this love she wants to go for it again. Giving shape without fear to ideas whilst standing behind her ideals and dreams. Also by helping and comforting others. This contact with love brings the best out of her. And for Hadewijch this is the case again and again. And she knows that exposing herself to the pain belongs to this way. But even then, or no, on the contrary she knows that she can stand in freedom to the fullest length if she first understands how to detach herself. ‘Noble Love may bind and free us like her beloved ones’, she says. In tasting the other you taste your own self, your own essence. And in the end she knows that she is loved actively, although Love God seems to be far at times. ‘Have mercy on me as Love doesn’t take pity you see’, she utters. But yes: HE IS AND ALWAYS SHALL BE THERE. But, tasting her is so utterly delicious, you want to experience that continuously! But she dares to enjoy the way Love is there for her, what he owns. Also the freedom that Love isn’t always obviously available. And she knows, she always be in Love’s memory. The fun thing is, that the Dutch old word for Love, minne, is derived from latin: mens, spirit or consciousness and memini, which means ‘to remember’. Minne, Love refers therefore to the thought of the beloved! And this Love can occupy everything in your life when active. Do you and I have something with Hosea’s and Hadewijchs experiences? What do we do with it? Can we do anything with that mysterious Eternal One, described to us as alternatively powerfully manifesting herself as well as shining through big absence? Love, Minne is a contradiction that lives in his own being. But is the Eternal One yet a contradiction? God seems to be absent only these days. At least this may be experiences by many of us as I hear many sighs as: ‘religions and God only give a pretext for violence and war.’ Or: ‘I want to deal with spirituality, but cannot find it.’ It seems to me that there is a lack of ideals and dreams. The passion, the zest for life seems to be smashed away to people a bit. People, only concentrated on the own little world and just ‘go on with life’. Companies that don’t hesitate to display unethical methods, the scandals are well known to us. Everything for reasons of increase of profit. I guess people are often quite bored and become disinterested, many people that don’t experience life as a gift, but as a yoke. And indeed such feelings can be justified and feel very deeply genuine. What if your partner is unfaithful, or you are victimised by betrayal, violence or guile? What if you are really ill? Where IS Love, God then? It should then work on you as encouragement, like morning dew that sparkles more purely and freshly than the largest diamonds. But this Love seems to be hidden away, a lover afar and aloof. These are questions easier posed and answered. But Hosea and Hadewijch do tell you and me today something. Namely, on your own readiness of heart. Do you have readiness of heart? Can you open yourself with full surrender by accepting life fully and go for it? Not eschewing emotions? Still willing to be confronted by that Love, who isn’t the easiest of lovers, being non-present at times. But who is the true Love, because one tends to forget he is always there. And…how do you do such a thing? Because not everybody reaches the avenues of a prophet or mystic. I think, with Hadewijch and Hosea: to learn how to look with new eyes to others and yourself. To admit surprise with regard to the other. Or yourself. To show care and compassion, however wrong that other person may be in your perception. Like Hosea, who learned to be there for Gomer. He wanted to be like the dew, who wished that that wild lily his wife was could grow in her own being. Can we be for one another like refreshing dew? That we cherish and support each other? Keeping in mind we are interdependent of each other. Sometimes our life paths cross, we need to work that out for the better. Perhaps we can learn to love Love in return in this concrete, uneasy way. Hadewijch tried so, and succeeded by bits and pieces. Learn to love Love back. Where his open invitation doesn’t stay with one of those annoying receptions you don’t go to in the end. No, it has to deal with a total different, subtle and tender love game that is reciprocal. A give and take mutually. Learn to be there for Minne, for God Love, like she is there for us in the end. Hadewijch calls us to give voice to the deep passion that burns deep inside of us. We need to be adventurous and dare to surrender ourselves in order to really find. Self interest ought to be pushed aside, impurities in our actions should be unmasked. With that belongs the pain risk. But that’s the road you can go with Love, in a rich, total and inspired life in which our inner spark is loaden up. In the direction of ourselves, creation with all living beings, in order that the Kingdom may break through! I quote a texts from the theologian Huib Oosterhuis: ‘It’s inescapable. I don’t want to live in this house, until I have found Him and He me. And how! A sea of dreams is storming inside!’ Amen
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